By Richard D. Erlich
Okay, here’s an angle on the Michael Phelps marijuana debate you haven’t seen yet: grammatical.
Consider the following sample sentence: “The police broke in and saw in the sordid, sinful scene alcohol and drugs, a bong and drug paraphernalia, a pistol and weapons, and an editor and human beings.”
In approximately 16,500 instances on the World Wide Web the name “Michael Phelps” was associated with the phrase “alcohol and drugs” or “drugs and alcohol,” and, I am certain, most readers read over the phrase with no problems.
There’s a problem, a problem my sample sentence should make clear.
A bong is an item of drug paraphernalia; pistols are weapons; editors are human beings — and beverage alcohol, drunk to induce pleasure or avoid pain, is a drug.
To correct the phrase, one can say “alcohol and other drugs” or “alcohol and illegal drugs. Such corrections are easy, and that “alcohol and drugs” is a common phrase is important for the debate on marijuana and other drugs.
Alcohol use as beer is about as old as human civilization. If alcohol is a drug, drug use is at least as old as civilization. And looking at beer, wine, mead, marijuana, coca, opium, psychoactive mushrooms, caffeine — etc., one can say that the great majority of human cultures have had drug use as a normal activity. You can say it’s pathological or sinful, but drug-use is statistically normal; people who don’t use some drug are unusual, in a statistical sense, abnormal.
“The exception proves the rule” means that exceptions test rules (compare “The proof of the pudding is in the eating”), and honest debaters should test generalized and sensationalized assertions about DRUGS!! by taking as an example of a drug something like a good Merlot or, for fun with conservatives, Coors beer.
If alcohol is a drug, statements about the risks of drug use must contain references to the personal risks and social costs of alcohol. From there we can go to the history of drug control in the USA, including the capital “P” Prohibition of booze in the early 20th century. And from there we can trace the social effects of Prohibition and compare them with the effects of our current drug prohibitions.
For example, my mother and her sister found themselves avoiding bullets behind a car during a drive-by shooting on a street in Chicago. That was during Prohibition, and Chicago-area gangs were working out disputes over, primarily, booze-distribution territory.
Sound familiar? Well such “Capitalism by other means” made economic street-sense during Prohibition, and violent gang competition continues to make such sense today, with high costs for society. My mother and aunt could’ve been killed, and gang members and other people are killed.
Further, Prohibition denied the American State tax monies desperately needed during the Great Depression, so it should be no surprise that Prohibition went into effect in the expanding economy of 1919 and got repealed in the depressed year of 1933. “The Great Experiment” became too expensive, both in direct costs and foregone revenue.
In 1919, however, the US was going Isolationist; in 2009, we’re up to our figurative corporate butt in two wars. And in one of those wars, in Afghanistan, the figurative “War on Drugs” is getting in the way of a literal struggle against extremists.
Michael Phelps has some things to apologize for. He should apologize again for driving drunk at age 19. And he should apologize for inhaling. Cooled smoke taken with a water pipe is less harmful than hot smoke from a reefer, but Phelps still set a bad example, and set himself up for betrayal, by so openly putting any smoke into his lungs. He should have taken his marijuana in dope tea, banana bread, or bran muffins (brownies are mostly empty calories).
If we remember that it’s “alcohol and other drugs,” we can see that occasionally getting zonked is normal human, adult behavior. And it’s not a bad idea — a sober driver having been designated — for a compulsive athlete like Michael Phelps.
Richard D. Erlich lives in Port Hueneme.
